Other forms: interventions, intervene, intervened
An intervention is stepping into something that is already happening in order to change how it ends. A country intervenes in a war, a teacher in a fight, a doctor in an illness.
The word carries a faint sense of not being invited, which is why it can sound heavy: military intervention, state intervention. Medicine uses it plainly for any treatment. There is also a specific modern use — an intervention where family and friends confront somebody about their drinking or their debts — and that sense now dominates everyday speech in some countries.
1nouninterventionThe act of stepping into a situation to change what happens.~80%
“Only the referee's intervention stopped the fight.”
synonyms: involvement, interference
2nountreatmentA medical treatment or procedure.~18%
“The surgical intervention lasted four hours.”
3nounplannedA planned meeting in which people confront somebody about their behaviour.~2%
“His sisters organised an intervention.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 181 sentences found in the wild and placed 170 of them on a sense (11 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
INTER-vention → INTER, as in INTERnational: between
Two people shouting across a table. A third walks into the gap between them and puts a hand flat on each chest.
hooks ontointernational
Latin inter, between, and venire, to come — to come between. Every use of the word still has somebody stepping into a gap.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷem-
Latin
interventiō
Middle French
intervention
English, today
intervention
From Middle French intervention, from Latin interventiō. Morphologically intervene + -tion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA